Drought over? Well, no

A dry run for many

Just ask James Hardman and Nancy Clark, who have been living without water for four months in the Madison County manufactured home they share.

''I'm hauling it from anybody who's got a spigot outside,'' Hardman said. ''I've got to have water for my family.''

Hardman has even surrounded his home with five-gallon buckets to catch rainfall, but that doesn't help much when there's no rain -- and meanwhile there are dishes and clothes to wash, food to cook, the bathroom, and the water needs of two adults and two teen-agers.

''It's pretty rough,'' admitted Clark. ''It's a matter of figuring out each day where we're going to get water.''

Buckets and empty garbage cans line the outside of James Hardman's premanufactured home Thursday, January 4, 2001. Hardman uses the containers to collect rainwater for bathing, etc. Madison County wells are running dry, including that of Hardman, who has to haul water in his car.Jeff Blake/Photo staff

Neighbors Donald and Diana Robinson are a little better off. Hardman's bored well is only about 45 feet deep, but the Robinsons' well goes 75 feet down. Their well still produces enough water for bathing, plumbing and cooking, but not for laundry -- and with four children living at home, there's a lot of laundry, which means a lot of trips, said Diana Robinson.

''We can pretty much make it, because I go to the laundromat all the time,'' she said. ''The rain we've had hasn't helped any.''

According to a drought report recently completed by the state Environmental Protection Division, thousands of wells have gone dry during the drought, and Madison County is among the hardest-hit in the state, with around 100 dry wells.

And the county continues to see more dry wells, said Marvin Rowland, operations manger for Oconee Well Drillers.

''They're still going dry,'' Rowland said. ''The water table will continue to drop throughout the winter. The water we've got so far (in rain and snow) hasn't helped at all. It's going to take an abnormal amount of winter rains to get the water table back up. Even if we get normal rainfall, we're not out of the woods.''

Hardman would like to get a deeper well on his property, but even working two jobs he doesn't have enough left over to afford the cost. One company told him it would cost at least $5,000 and maybe as much as $10,000 to get a 100-foot drilled well, Hardman said.

He's looked for emergency help from government agencies or other sources, but so far without luck.

Winter rains might fill the well up again by this spring, but that's months away and there are no guarantees, Hardman said.

There's not a lot of encouragement in the National Weather Service's long-range forecast for the area: there's about an equal chance of average, below or about normal rainfall, according to winter rainfall forecasts.

''It is not encouraging at this point, but it is also very early in the season. It could still turn around,'' said state climatologist David Stooksbury.

No water in the well

More than 1,600 wells went dry in 2000 in the 40 Georgia counties surveyed in October by the state Environmental Protection Division. Among the hardest-hit counties in the state are Madison, Oglethorpe and Oconee. The statewide total is likely much higher, according to the report -- there is no data yet for the state's 119 other counties. The situation has forced Hardman to use buckets and garbage cans to collect rainwater for things like bathing.

''The concern is, the later we get into the winter, the later that occurs (significant rainfall), the less time we have for adequate recharge of deep soil moisture, groundwater and our reservoirs,'' Stooksbury said.

Meanwhile, lake levels remain far below normal, stream flows are still near record lows in many parts of the state, and there's no rain in at least the near future.

A state watering ban imposed by the EPD remains in effect: no outdoor watering at all between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. People in houses with even-number addresses can water outside those hours on even-number dates, and vice-versa for people with odd-number addresses.

''I would feel much better if we were getting above-normal rainfall,'' Stooksbury said. ''Even in south Georgia, where things look better, we're just seeing the effects of last week's heavy rains, and the near-term forecast is not promising for us to receive widespread moderate rains.''

The drought could even add dollars to electric bills.

Since May 1999, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has cut back on releases on lakes such as Hartwell and Lanier to keep lake levels from going even farther down than they have.

That means that electric turbines have not been generating as much electricity, and power suppliers like Elberton-based Southeastern Power Administration have been forced to buy more electricity from other suppliers.

It now costs about $61 per megawatt-hour to buy that power, twice as much as a year ago. SEPA spent $18.2 million on such purchases last year, and eventually that cost will have to be passed on to the electric power cooperatives and cities that buy the agency's power -- and then to their customers -- said SEPA power operations specialist Donnie Cordell.

There's no end in the near future to those purchases, though, he said.

''It's taken us two or three years to get into this, and it's probably going to take us a while to get out,'' Cordell said.

That's not much encouragement for Nancy Clark, who would like nothing more in the world than to be able to count on water for the things that most people take for granted -- like a good hot shower.

''We're desperate, we really are,'' she said.

Higher education reporter Lee Shearer can be reached at lshearer@onlineathens.com or (706) 208-2236.